The skyline of Montreal is home to a new member of the Hilton Hotels family, the Hilton Garden Inn, with 37 above-grade floors that employ a variety of colors on two color precast panels — light beige, with both heavy and light sandblasts, and black-pigmented with acid wash. The 36-month construction schedule saw the precast panels erected in six months in the $67-million combination hotel and residential structure. But the real story was in the use of SlenderWall precast panels that reduced the dead load of the structure by some 50 percent.

“We had a certain limitation on the site because it is an infill site,” says Eric Huot, Partner with Geiger & Huot Architects, “and because of the technical constraints of the location for the tower crane, we had to go to a very lightweight precast panel — because I think that at the end of the boom, we had something like a 12,000 pound capacity and a traditional panel would have been way over that.” That requirement led to a relationship with Montreal’s Betons Prefabrique du Lac (BPDL) to supply the SlenderWall product.

“The precast allowed us to close the building (quickly)”, explains Richard Varadi, Project Manager for contractor Groupe Canvar. “It’s a high building and we couldn’t wait until (the frame) was all the way to the top to start closing it off so precast panels really became our only option.”